War nickels?

Had a question, when searching nickels, is there any way to rim search? I dont know if i can look at every date on my nickels. Are there any other methods to do a quick check? When CRH any coin, how do you guys usually check them. Do you look at every date on every coin? or do you scan the edges real quick or what?

Re: War nickels?

Re: War nickels?

Im kind of answering my own question here, in case anyone else might wanna know. I picked up a few rolls earlier, and in one of the nickel rolls, i found a 1943 P war nickel mixed in. If i wasnt looking at dates, i never would have noticed it. It did not appear any darker than any of the other nickels. All my other war nickels are really dark, and this hasnt even started to turn dark yet. Check your dates on the nickels.

Re: War nickels?

There is no real easy way to do nickles. I date search every one. I do not like to do them at home, I often do them on the road about $20 at a time. I will search when I am waiting to pick my kids up from school or soccer practice. You can often knock of a couple at long red lights. I keep all pre 1960. I once sold $20 of pre 1960 to a guy I found on Craigs List for $40.

Re: War nickels?

Re: War nickels?

Originally Posted by quiksilver

after doing them for awhile you should be able to pick them out with a quik glance at the front or back

If you're just looking for war nickels then a sorter can be set up to pass all US nickels, and reject silver and foreign coins. When adjusted really tight it even rejected the Buffalo and V nickels I tested.

I keep all pre-1960 nickels so I don't just use the sorter only. After a pass through the sorter to catch the bulk of the more valuable nickels, I still search the passed coins looking for pre-1960's.

By the way. I don't know why yet but there seems to be a minor change in composition detected in post-2007 nickels. If the coin analyzer is adjusted too tightly, some 2008 and almost all later nickels will reject, and I notice that there is a tendency for some of them to be already corroded, more than the earlier nickels. The low-grade coin analyzers used in the coinalyzer and ryedale cannot be adjusted to detect that minor of a difference, but the CMI 16 series can be.

Re: War nickels?

I used to just flip them all over and look for the large mint mark, but I would also date search because some dates are worth more than war nickels. I'm one nickel away from completing a whole set of nickels. The hard ones to find are 1938S, 1938D, 1939S, 1939D, 1942D, 1948S, 1949S, 1950, 1950D, 1951S, 1955, and there are few others with lower mintages, but I usually throw those back. Also, do a google search on mint varieties (tiny variations or mistakes in minting), I once found a 1954 S over D which are hard to come by. By looking for war nickels, you might be passing up very rare dates and mints that could be worth more. Good Luck!

Re: War nickels?

Re: War nickels?

Lots of other nickels have dark rims, so rim searching is unreliable at best. I've also found a couple of war nickels with relatively light-colored rims. Check all of the dates.

Ditto what Golden Coin said about date checking and key dates. I found a 1938-s last week, something I've never seen outside of a coin shop, and I've also gotten 3 buffalos. You can't do that looking at rims.

FYI, I keep all pre-1956 nickels, plus all 2009s that don't look like they went through a meat grinder.